Moments
by Troodon
Summary: After all, those moments were all she lived for: a shout of genuine laughter, a sharp nip on her numb lips, a slow caress. [Femslash]


Author's Note: Writing this one-shot was an interesting experience for me. Please note that the following contains femslash; nothing explicit, but if you are averse to or offended by this idea, please click 'back' and spare yourself. Any comments and constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

_Disclaimer: The following is a piece of fanfiction. No money is made off this. There is no copyright infringement intended; all characters, concepts and backgrounds belong to the Star Trek franchise/Paramount._

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**Moments**

She was only seventeen when she left her home in anger and nineteen when she dropped out of the Academy in disgrace. She was nineteen when she landed a job working on a creaky frieghter for minimum wage and she was still nineteen when she learned to curse and say, "Back off!" in five different languages. She was nearly twenty when they discovered her, toiling in the oppressive darkness and damp of the freighter ship's engine room, up to her ankles in leaking coolant, still angry, still so young. It was then when she joined the Maquis, and it was on her twentieth birthday when, for the first time, she rigged and planted an explosive at a Cardassian supply depot.

With that decisive act, she found at twenty what she had left behind at seventeen: family. Suddenly she was accepted, appreciated, respected, one among many, united with her comrades against a visible, palpable foe. Suddenly she was more than a lost and angry girl; she was a fighter, fighting for what she thought was her cause, fighting really for herself. As the months passed and she turned nineteen, she learned to crack enemy codes in under two minutes and jury-rig her ship's power supplies in four different ways.

And in between the chaos and the surviving, when she was still only barely twenty and still so young, she learned to take her moments whenever and wherever she could, be it pressed against a rock face or on a cold ship's deck. She would grasp Seska with a fierce desperation, learning to live again after killing, biting, licking, scratching and stroking, if not out of love then just out of the need to know they had yet survived. When their frenzy was over, they would lie side by side listening to each other breathe, each thinking their own thoughts, thoughts too heartbreakingly cynical for their age. One was confused and still lost, the other lost already through her cunning. One was barely an adult and too raw to be anything but true, but for the other their embrace was simply another convenience, another form of deception.

And when she, the young survivor still so innocent in many ways, finally stirred, she would wake to find herself alone once more, one among the Maquis. And she would make her way back to the light, to where her newfound family would be congregated, and she would spar with Roberto and Jor and Le Paz, trying to ignore Seska's arms wrapped around her leader's waist.

Years passed, fruitless years, and she turned twenty-one, then twenty-two. She kept fighting for their hopeless cause, fighting for her own sanity now, for her lost youth. Each time she returned to her hard bunk after seeing more of her comrades die, she would inevitably seek out the enigmatic Seska, whose rage equalled her own, whose knowing little smile would enrage her, whose knowing eyes dared her to _come again, come again_. And each time she would go and take and be taken, no holds barred, just so they could feel again. Neither of them would utter a single coherent word as they moved, almost animal-like in their blind passion, both lost and rediscovering life and losing themselves once more in each other, until their almighty cause was forgotten and they could simply exist.

Then, as with every day of every month of every year since she joined the Maquis when she was nineteen, then her moment would be over and the alarms would ring, signalling a return to their never-ending mission against titanic odds. She would drag her tired body upright and return to her duty, because the Maquis were depending on her. For the sake of her pride she would not fail, and for the sake of her family she would succeed. All the moments, all her moments now, all would be shunted aside to make way for her purposeful anger, released as a driving, manic energy. Among the Maquis, at any moment all her moments may end and would end, regardless of whether she was twenty-two or forty.

After all, those moments were all she lived for: a shout of genuine laughter, a sharp nip on her numb lips, a slow caress. The aftermath of each battle would give her a moment, no matter how fleeting. Her moments were hers and hers alone, uncountable experiences, a passing solution to the problems she was frustratingly unable to solve. They were her one secret indulgence, but there was no room for regrets and if she should die the next day she would have had her light. During those heated, gasping moments, she would no longer be defined by time, by her past regrets. Barely a woman yet already burdened, she would no longer be part of a resistance, but merely a drowning animal seeking some semblance of life in the dark, lost among many.

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End file.
